The Road To Portsmouth
by Gunney
Summary: Sequel to "The Street Singer" After finding Bijou and Nikola in France, Helen and Will get a few answers. P.S. I love reviews!
1. Chapter 1

**I'm really not sure where I'm going with this so bear with me. I'm having trouble letting go of Tesla in '43 and figured a little bit of sequel wouldn't hurt. But first, a little of my twisted humor. ~Gunney**

* * *

Chapter 1

_Somewhere in Belgium, Maybe_

_March 1943_

Nikola woke. The air around him was frigid. His ears were assaulted by loud clanging and screeches, the sounds more prevalent in his left ear than his right. The ground smelled like straw and feces and molding wood. Only it wasn't ground, it was a floor. He could see the ground through the floor, from where he lay on his side, and he watched through barely open eyes as it slid by at an alarming rate.

Truck maybe, or a train. The rhythmic clanging and the screeching and the constant jolting told him it was most definitely a train. The motion was making his stomach clench. Since he rarely ate he had no reason to feel sick to his stomach. It had to be something else and he decided that sitting up might relieve it. He brought his right hand up to use it for leverage and was surprised at the scrape of metal and the involuntary movement of his left hand.

Chains, attached to heavy metal cuffs. The cuffs weren't attached to anything but him. He jolted up right and shifted his legs. More chains.

Memories came flooding back. Liege, Belgium. The fountain, the entertainment troupe that was to disguise his presence in the city as a spy…Bijou. Then their escape. Nikola's final showdown with Kohrber. He had tried to kill the German Colonel. He could only assume that he had been stopped.

The myriad of holes in his coat and suit jacket confirmed it, along with the still drying blood. And he was hungry.

He stumbled to his feet and stood in the swaying boxcar, noting quickly that he was alone inside, but probably wouldn't be outside. If they saw him as enough of a threat to chain him surely they would have seen fit to post guards.

He broke the chains quickly and easily. The cuffs could come off later. He had been underestimated, but that sort of mistake never happened twice. If he was going to make good on his escape he would have to do it right.

He picked up the sway of the car and moved with it to one of the long walls of thin boards, peering through the gaps at snow and barren trees and distant houses. It might have been late afternoon. Same day, he assumed, as it shouldn't have taken him longer than a few hours to recover.

He had never been terribly good at the outdoors thing, but if his time in the wilderness as a very young man had taught him anything it was how to read cardinal directions using the sun.

They were headed south east, more than likely Kohrber thought he was taking a prize back to the precious Fuhrer. Nikola smirked to himself a little disappointed that he wouldn't be there to see the little man tearing Colonel Franz Kohrber into bite sized pieces. But he wasn't that fond of trains, and he had stopped liking Belgium the second time he was shot in the country.

No, it was time to depart, he decided and there was a bridge ahead. The vampire backed away from the wall he'd been peering through toward the opposite wall, hoping that the bridge was over water and not a rocky, dry canyon. Of course being wet in the frigid air wasn't all that enjoyable either—

He cut off the thought trail, vamped and charged the wall. Wood splintered and flew as he crashed through the flimsy barricade. He just barely caught a glimpse of the river below before he flipped around in the air. He could see the shocked faces of two Arian teenagers on the roof expected to keep him at bay, then he flipped again, curled into a ball and crashed into the coldest water he'd ever before experienced.

* * *

_Paris, France _

_Present Day_

"Oh, yeah right!" Will said, slamming a half full glass of orange juice down on the table.

Nikola blinked at the interruption, his lips working to keep the delighted smile to a minimum. Both Helen and Elise Bronstien-Dumont, who had been listening intently to the story, stared at Will as well.

"Please! Like the Nazi government would make the mistake of only putting you in chains, regular old iron chains. I mean you're a VAMP-" More than just the people at their table were now staring over at the irate blonde and Will quickly dropped the volume of his voice, looking around sheepishly. "You're a vampire. Of all the research and preparation they did, how could they not know what you were capable of."

"_I _didn't even know what I was capable of.." Tesla said, sharing a glance with Helen. "The benefits were long life and perfect health, but other than a few months tracking down Adam Worth, I rarely left the lab. Towards the end of the 1930s the world knew me as a pathetic, crazy old man—"

Will muttered something that Tesla knew he would never repeat, but he paused anyway to give the whelp a proper glare before continuing. "I was holed up in a hotel room most of the time." By then Tesla was pouting a little. When his bright gray blue eyes shifted to her, Elise burst into a fit of giggles, and hid behind her mimosa.

"It _is_ true, Will. The Axis' use of abnormals was a desperate grasp at something they knew nothing about. In fact they worked very hard to exterminate as many abnormals as they could before they thought about using them to their advantage."

"So then what happened?" Elise asked, her English attractively accented, her voice slightly gravelly in nature. It was clear to Helen and Tesla that she was enjoying every moment of this trip down memory lane, regardless of how much of it Will believed.

"I froze." Tesla said.

* * *

_Somewhere in Germany _

_March 1943_

The river was cold and deep enough that he remained fully submerged for more than a minute before he recovered enough from the impact to swim to the surface. His lungs started to burn, even as the cold was shocking him numb. He was already being carried downstream and he could hear shouts above him. He spared a glance just as one of the soldiers opened fire on him.

The train was still moving and the soldier's aim was off. It hadn't stopped yet, Kohrber didn't know he had escaped, but it wouldn't take long.

Though it was March the weather had taken another step back towards winter. The mountain fed river was frigid and movement was challenging enough without the pesky need for oxygen, or the pain that was starting in his feet and his fingertips.

He wanted to swim to shore but he would be sluggish, waterlogged and hypothermic on the bank while struggling through what looked like several feet of snow drifts. No, it was best to let the river carry him away, he thought, just before he drifted to sleep.

He'd had this wild hope that when he woke it would be in the arms of a lover. There Helen would be, with his head propped in her lap, brushing a warm cloth across his brow and whispering sweet urgings to him, demanding that he live, professing her love. Promising everything he'd ever desired if only he would live.

And when he woke there was something warm and wet against his forehead. It smelled revolting but it was warm and Nikola knew a brief moment of regret when the warmth stopped and was replaced by a brief shower of snow and dead grass.

He batted open the eye closest to the ground, having to fight the pull of ice crystals that had formed on his lashes. He caught the hind end of a mutt wagging away from him, saw the splashes of yellow that had landed near his hands instead of on his face and gagged reflexively.

He lifted his head from the ground, moaned at the throbbing that began immediately, but kept going. Every move he made meant a snap of ice crystals that had formed in his soaked clothing, the working of fingers, hands, toes, appendages that had literally died as a result of severe hypothermia.

Getting to his feet was a practice in the law of leverage. He could barely bend his knees or his elbows so he was forced to teeter one way and then the other until he was upright. His left hand had frozen in an upright position giving him a semi-permanent awkward wave.

Thanks to the dog he dared not open his right eye, that being the only concession he could make to the rampant germ phobia that he was otherwise forced to ignore. One of his legs was twisted inward and frozen in that position. Forward motion would be impossible at best, but given that he was Nikola Tesla, boy genius, vampire and he added Belgian spy to the list; he could easily do the impossible.

* * *

_Paris, France_

_Present Day_

Will's laughter stopped him again. Nikola had left out the part about being peed on because he knew it would mean an interruption from the psychologist, but there was nothing else that he had said that should have led to hilarity.

All three of them leaned back in their chairs and stared as Will drew in desperate breaths, tried to say something, then was overwhelmed again and fell out of his chair. His foot flew out when he tried to catch himself, upset the table and dumped a glass of wine in Tesla's lap. The vampire jumped back, his supernatural speed allowing him to avoid the majority of the spill though some of it did land on his shoe.

Elise was caught up in it, trying to gauge where her reaction should be compared to the now angry vampire, the amused but disapproving brunette, and the still breathlessly entertained blonde on the ground. The open air café they had chosen to have breakfast in that morning was relatively full of customers, most of them young college students and tourist couples.

Will's first outburst had drawn their attention. This latest one had made him the center of it. He began to regain control of himself, working his way to his feet, still out of breath but no longer rolling on the ground. Magnus looked alarmed, her eyes going between Tesla and Will, not sure what the vampire was going to do. He still stood frozen in place staring at her second in command.

Will swallowed hard and took a deep breath, his eyes watery. He noticed that Tesla was still standing, glowering, and was altogether unfriendly.

"I'm sorry…" He said, choking a second later on the words and another burst of laughter that he kept behind closed lips this time.

A moment later Tesla broke out of his freeze with a huff and marched away from the table, glaring angrily down at the wine on his shoe, mumbling to himself.

Helen turned her most stern look toward her protégé.

Will gave her an innocent, 'what did I do?' shake of the head.

Helen sighed and looked in the direction Nikola had disappeared.

Elise asked, "Is….is this a joke I don't know?" Wondering if she hadn't missed something in her translation of the English. Helen shook her head, pointing at Will, just as clueless.

"Oh come on!" Will said. "Half dead, half alive."

Both women stared at him.

"Zombie!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

_Paris, France_

_Present Day_

Magnus left the table to find Nikola while Will tried to translate the word zombie into French. Once Elise had the idea of what he was saying the two quickly discovered they shared a sci fi passion.

Helen found the vampire quickly. The café was on a street filled with other such restaurants, boutiques, confectionary shops and bakeries. He had to have seen her reflection in one of the many shop windows because he looked up to her before she got close enough you say anything.

She slowed her steps a little not sure if he wanted her company, and for some reason sensitive to it. He held out his left elbow to her and she closed the distance separating them, linking her arm with his. He had his hands in his pockets and left them there guiding her casually down the street.

"Has your boy recovered?" He asked glancing back in the general direction of the café. "He spends any more time on the ground he'll be asked to leave."

"I haven't a clue what's got into him. I have the feeling he and Henry have been spending too many late nights watching movies from the '80s."

Tesla shuddered at the thought but didn't say anything.

They walked for a bit before he said, "I don't know why you had to bring him in the first place."

Helen gave him a look. "He helped me track you down, and he was the first to suggest that you might have been in Paris. He deserved it."

Tesla took in a breath shaking his head. "So disappointing. Think of the fun we might have had without the youngest along. There are, after all, hundreds of dark secluded passage ways in this city."

"Nikola. I came because I was concerned for you. I'd never before seen you so…"

"Dashing, heroic, irresistible."

"Silent…" Helen said, with just a little heat in her voice that dissipated quickly. "And…" She paused, caught between honesty and dropping the topic altogether. Knowing what the result would be if she spoke the truth. "Sad.." She said.

Nikola's eyes held her own for a moment, his lips parted to respond but no answers coming from them. Finally he sighed and turned away. He spotted a vender a second later and pulled Helen towards it. The cart was full of cell phones and souvenirs. On one side of the display was a collection of snow globes. Nikola lifted one, under the watchful eye of the seller, and shook it watching the flakes drift around a miniature sculpture of the Tower.

He held it up at eye level so that Helen could see it before sending a small measure of magnetic energy into it. A moment later there was a flurry of snow inside the heavy glass ball. Nikola grinned.

"They make them now with plastic, but the old ones have metallic flakes. This one is quite the find." He said before setting it back down onto the cart. The flurry continued even after his hand left it, drawing the attention of the owner who picked the bauble up and shook it, trying to stop the flakes. When Nikola finally released his magnetic hold on them, the flakes plummeted to the ground, some of them sticking to the Eifel Tower. No matter how he shook it the owner couldn't get the flakes to budge.

"Apparently it isn't only Will who is out of sorts." Helen said, amused despite herself at the vampire's antics.

"Oh Helen, all in fun. Besides it's been so long since we've been in Paris. Why not make it memorable."

They walked further down the street, stopping by a vendor selling sweets and caramelized nuts. They were each offered a sample and Helen took one, eating it slowly and smiling at the memories that it produced. None of them had ever had anything do with a half-frozen vampire in the middle of Germany.

* * *

_Outside Miltenberg, Germany_

_March 1943_

He had decided that it had to have been the Moselle River he had jumped into. He hadn't been unconscious in the train car long enough for it to be anything farther east. That put him in south western Germany as there were no rivers in the north.

From the river bank he had easily found a snow covered road and began walking. The first three miles had been torturous. The slow awakening of his fingers and toes the absolute worst of it. He gained no warmth from his coat, or the soaked pants, vest and jacket. His vampiric healing wouldn't allow him to fall back into unconsciousness and did nothing to speed up the warming of his extremities. It was misery, entirely and without exception.

The sight of the church steeple towering above a rise in the snow covered road and spirals of smoke filtering from several chimneys reminded him of the stories of angels that his father had told when speaking to his congregation, so far in the past that Nikola was shocked he even remembered it. Ironically the angels that Tesla saw were coming from fires, and not celestial origins.

He stumbled stiffly into the town, limping due to one warmed leg, and one still quite frozen leg. There were children about, running after pets and other children. Adults chatting on the streets instead of standing in the warmth of their own homes. An entire population of people that stared with alarm at the frost covered individual lurching down their main street.

A woman cried out, "Ketzel! Ketzel, libeling!" Then ran for the door of her house. Nikola supposed he was a fright, and yes there might have been reason for the woman to shout for her husband. He expected he would soon be met with the barrel of a shot gun, he would hear the click-clack of the hammer being drawn back and he would be ordered out of the town. He could hardly blame them. Covered in dog piss, half-vamped and wearing bloodied, hole riddled clothing; he looked like every monster from every horror movie made, put together.

He was relatively shocked when the man the woman had been calling came from his home with a pile of blankets instead of a gun. Not only did it seem that this Ketzel had an interest in providing warmth to a complete stranger, but he had some of the other men help him as well. He was soon surrounded by well-meaning citizens, or perhaps confusingly kind criminals as he was undecided on whether or not to trust them. After all he was now in Nazi Germany. He was covered by blankets and was being ushered forward.

The blankets were warmer than the air outside and even that small amount of heat allowed him to generate the energy he needed to revert completely back to his human form. He was being guided, or pushed, depending, toward what he hoped was a warm hearth and he closed his eyes, feeling a little too much like he didn't care.

It took him a half hour to begin shivering again. The woman of the house, a short brunette who was being beckoned from all over the house by the name Hagred, had placed a bowl of dark steaming broth in front of him the moment he entered her home. Every time she walked by she would lift it, trying to press it against his lips, force it into his stomach. He finally gave in to her insistence, if only to give her reason to leave him alone.

It wasn't to his liking as far as taste, or nourishment, but the heat flooding him now from the inside as well as the outside sped up the healing process exponentially. He was as human as he would ever be by the time the sun set.

It would be his first, and only night, in Miltenberg, Germany.

* * *

_Paris, France_

_Present Day_

She had a question that had been bugging her since Nikola first began explaining what had happened in early 1943.

It wasn't an easy question so she decided to ask it without preamble.

"What happened to the boy?"

"I assume he's still yukking it up at the café." Nikola said without pause.

"No." Helen said, smirking briefly. "Elise's brother. The young boy you caught in Liege."

Tesla ducked his head, his mood shifting to something more somber, the way Helen thought he might. She expected him to evade the question again and was surprised when he answered.

"I don't know. Dead. Gone. Who knows."

"Can you be certain of that?" Helen probed, keeping any accusations out of her voice.

"He's dead, Helen. Kohrber left nothing to chance. He found me out in less than a month, and I was 80 years young at the time. A twelve year old boy didn't stand a chance."

Helen wanted to press him further but felt too much like she was dealing with a time bomb. She was surprised when Tesla continued on his own.

"Dane, Georg and I searched all night that night. I looked everywhere I could think of and for a week after that on my own. Yes, there was a multitude of places for a small boy to hide. But he would have been without water, proper shelter or food. Unless he had another contact in that city, there would have been no chance."

"Were you planning on telling Elise?"

"Tell-" Nikola gave a harsh laugh. "Tell her what. That she might have had a brother to grow up with, someone who knew her real mother, but because of me she lost everything? Yes Helen, but I was saving it for after ten o'clock tea."

Helen's eyes widened, some of the old anger at the arrogance of Nikola Tesla returning. "This is hardly about your guilt. She is a grown woman. She has already faced more demons than we even know about. She wants to know what happened in '43 or she wouldn't have joined us this morning. She deserves to know the truth. All of it."

Nikola said nothing, looking away from her.

"She's not a child, Nikola."

That brought Tesla's eyes back her way with a flash of denial, and maybe even surprise.

"He's dead, Helen. There wouldn't even be a grave for her to visit. What's the point?"

"What if he isn't? What if he isn't dead? Or what if he survived, escaped, grew up and married and had children? What if she has nieces and nephews that know nothing about her."

"You really think, with the amount of acclaim she has now that they wouldn't know about her. Or try to make contact…"

"Stranger things have happened." Helen said. Nikola started to turn from her and she reached out, her finger tips resting against his shoulder to stop him from pulling away.

* * *

_Miltenberg, Germany_

_March 1943_

The fingertips on his shoulder wouldn't leave him alone. Worse still they were joined by a voice that was insistent that he wake.

"Soldiers. Die Soldaten kommen für Sie." The voice said and Nikola groaned. The bed he had been laying on had been moved in close to the fireplace at Hagred's insistance. She and her husband going out of their way to care for their impromptu and uninvited guest. The fire had died down and the sky was still dark beyond the small windows.

„Die soldaten kommen fur Sie." She said again, her face very close to his, her hands grasping his arms now, pulling him upright. Someone else was tugging at the blanket, stretching it in their haste to tear it from his body. He fought the stripping half-heartedly until he understood the goal, and saw the pile of clothing in Ketzel's arms.

A warm cotton shirt, a hand-knit sweater that might have been dark blue or gray. He waved their hands away when it came to changing the rest of him, pulling on the trousers, thick soled winter shoes over woolen socks. He looked around for his coat as he stood, ignoring the coat Ketzel held for him at first until Hagred whispered urgently.

„Ihre Kleidung verbrannt worden."

She looked mildly guilty when she said it, but that did nothing for Tesla. His coat, along with the rest of the clothing he had been wearing before, had been burned. He slipped into the coat they gave him, recieved a weighted sack that contained food by the smell of it, then was urgently shoved out the door.

It was snowing. The flakes were tiny and dry, the air colder than it had been the day before. For a few moments Nikola stood outside the home he had been so recently warmly sequestered in, still trying to wake up. Unsure of where he was supposed to go, or for that matter, why. Supposedly there were soldiers coming.

Since he was the only stranger in the small town it made sense that they would think the soldiers came for him. He turned in half a circle, his eyes adjusting to the dim light on the street before he jumped, the door opening behind him again.

Ketzel nodded to his shocked expression, pulling on his own coat. He turned to Hagred, kissed her, then took something from her hands and nodded for Tesla to follow him. They traveled together into the snow, down the street to a small barn attached to another house. A series of brief knocks and they were allowed access. Inside he came into brief contact with a pair of horses.

Ketzel guided him around the hoofed beasts and he finally understood. There was a sleigh attached, thankfully sans bells. He was urged up into it, Ketzel followed and after the coast was deemed clear, the barn door was fully opened and they slipped out into the night.

Behind them Tesla could just make out a column of dark uniforms on the road west of the town.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

They were being held at the airport. It had nothing to do with security really because she was the top security clearance for her flight and she, Nikola and Will had all passed through and made it to the tarmac without any problems. The security chief at the small strip had never given her an issue in the past, primarily because he was a humanoid abnormal who relied on shipments from Magnus to keep his job and his freedom.

Magnus would send him what he needed once or twice a year, sometimes coming with the shipments to check on the handful of abnormals running a small Sanctuary Annex in the French countryside, and he would ensure that she would always have a place to land her private jet without having to deal with customs, security or quarantines.

After all forty days of waiting, while some abnormal rattled around in a cage it didn't want to be in, could mean trouble.

The delay was wide spread, pertaining to all flights leaving Paris. There was a storm overhead, stretching for miles in every direction, including up, that prevented take off for a handful of hours. Helen wasn't happy about it. Will was already bored and complaining about all the paper work that he wouldn't have done if he was at the Sanctuary, but claimed he could be doing if he wasn't stuck in Paris.

Nikola was silent.

He had already taken a pad of paper and pencil from behind the comptroller's desk and was bent over at a counter scribbling madly on page after page. Will had given her one or two questioning glances that she had tried to ignore. When the blonde finally asked her the question out loud, she told him, "I haven't a clue." Then got up to go to the pot sitting behind the ticket counter, pouring hot water over an Earl Gray tea bag.

Her conversation with Nikola concerning what might have been Elise' long lost brother had ended abruptly. He'd turned from her, refused to respond to any other questions and she had been forced to return to their table, chagrinned and angry.

Will had asked, "What happened?" as if he didn't remember bursting into laughter and knocking over the vampire's wine in the middle of relatively painful retelling of his past. Helen had grabbed her purse and stormed off, heading for the hotel they had been staying in. By the time she got there she was calmer and was able to check out Will and herself without tearing the desk clerk's head from his shoulders.

Will returned to the room while she was packing and silently did the same.

"Did Nikola say anything to you?" She asked him.

"He came back to the table, asked if he could see Elise to a cab and told me he would meet us at the airport." Will said, his manner subdued compared to that of earlier.

Helen hadn't meant to create such a mood between them, nor had she meant to further upset Nikola. Never in the past had the subject of the war and their involvement in it held so many connotations for her and she still had the feeling that she didn't know all of it. There was still a gap of several months where Nikola had been unaccounted for before returning to London in late 1943 , a time period she had once happily assumed Nikola spent in his native Serbia.

His letters had stopped arriving about when he had returned to the London Sanctuary and she hadn't put much thought into the delay of mail during war time, or that his letters should have continued to come to her even after he returned.

When she had been laminating and cataloguing them she hadn't even read them.

As she sat in the tiny, near empty airport building Helen wondered; if she had said something then, back in late 1943, would it have made a difference?

Would Nikola have even answered her?

* * *

_Two Miles West of Templin Air Field, Germany_

_March 1943_

"No! Not a chance!" He shouted in response.

"Scheiße!"

Nikola looked to his driver with an amused expression then turned his attention back to the road behind them. What had started out as a column of soldiers on foot in the dark of pre-dawn had turned into an armored truck full of them. Only it wasn't a truck but some sort of hybrid far more suited to the terrain. Instead of rubber tires, it had metal wheels with spokes that allowed it to grip the snow covered dirt road, and it was gaining on the two-horse open sleigh in a way that the classic Christmas song didn't really allow for.

The only downfall to the design of the Nazi vehicle was that the driver and passenger were perched out in the open. The back of the thing was a giant, armored box that could be used for troop or supply transport but did nothing to shield the man behind the wheel.

Ketzel must have been thinking the same thing because a moment later he had plopped a gun into Nikola's lap. What the man was doing with a 1938 Navy Colt revolver Nikola couldn't fathom. It had to have cost him more than a fortune to import the American gun, let alone get it shipped all the way to landlocked Miltenberg. Nikola only knew so much about guns, having left that little hobby to the others of The Five, but he knew enough to see that the gun was well taken care of. He'd spent enough hours watching Tueur take apart his Luger to know how much effort that involved.

After brief consideration Nikola set the gun back down on the seat of the sleigh. He didn't need guns. Ketzel cast him a surprised glance, perhaps wondering why he hadn't yet opened fire. The horses were pounding at the fresh snow, pulling the sleigh faster and faster up the road but it wouldn't do. The vehicle…whatever it was, was gaining on them and Nikola felt a little like the character Jonah that his father had been entirely too fond of.

Nikola didn't know for sure if Ketzel would be spared once he jumped ship. Knowing Korhber, the German farmer would be dead the second the horses slowed.

No, running wasn't an option, any more than defending against an army of soldiers with a single six shot revolver.

Nikola turned in his seat to look back at the armored transport, and then tapped Ketzel's shoulder.

"Nicht zu stoppen." He said, then brought his feet up onto the seat, crouching while he steadied himself.

Kohrber wasn't riding with the driver. It was another nameless soldier in another identical light gray uniform. They hadn't fired yet but then Nikola had seen the way Kohrber handled things. He was fairly certain the men behind him deserved to die. At the least they deserved to be stopped.

Ketzel would have been responsible for saving his life if Nikola had actually been at risk of losing it. He shouldn't have been out on that road. The farmer should have been safely and warmly wrapped in his bed with his wife.

Mind made up Nikola jumped from the moving sleigh. He landed on the snowy ground, curling into a ball and bouncing a few times before he impacted something hard, loud and metallic. It hurt but he had only seconds to keep from being run over. He managed to find the top of the grill and clung to it even as his lower half fell, dragging underneath the front of the vehicle. Snow was crammed into the tops of his shoes before he was able to lift them off the ground.

His transformation was next. Teeth, eyes, strength, claws cutting their way out of his gloves. Blood had trickled briefly from his nose before the healing began, and he didn't look terribly pretty coming up over the hood ornament, judging by the stunned looks from the soldiers.

He had to pause and breathe for a moment, letting the rib that had been snapped with the first bounce move back into its proper place, while clinging like a fly to the hood of the…he still didn't know what to call it. He'd heard of tanks but these weren't it.

Still the soldiers said nothing, the mega-trank moving forward as they stared dumbly at him.

He finally said, "Hi," thinking that he might as well seem agreeable.

The soldier on the left responded to the sound, lifting a hand as if to salute. The driver smacked him for it, then tugged at the soldier's gun. That seemed to snap the friendly one out of his stupor and he tried to maneuver the large weapon in the little space he had between himself and the dash. The driver slapped him again and Sergeant Friendly glared before going for a gun on his belt.

Once he had it pulled Nikola would have two choices, duck or move. He chose to move and buried his claws into the hood of the trank, hauled himself up with every ounce of strength he had and just got his feet underneath him when the gun came into play.

He heard _click click_, watched the driver grab the gun in frustration and kicked the man's teeth in. The driver was dazed and bleeding and the gun was still useless in his hand, Sgt. Friendly was scared again, trying once more to bring his machine gun to bear.

The Trank had started to weave, losing its traction on the road. A quick glance ahead told Tesla that Ketzel had either managed to gain a lot of ground and disappear up the road or he had pulled his sleigh out of the way entirely.

Nikola reached down with one hand, the other engaged in the large sheet of metal protecting the back part of the Trank, grabbed Sgt. Friendly's gun and flung it, and the soldier, free of the vehicle. He slipped down into the passenger seat as the Trank headed for a ditch, jerked the wheel so that they were heading back for the middle of the road, and landed another punch on the driver's jaw.

He felt bones give way under his fist, the driver went limp and slumped against the wheel, taking it out of Nikola's hand and turning it so sharply that traction no longer had any say in what the vehicle did on the road.

The vampire tried to jump free as they tilted sideways, but the snow that he had gone tumbling through made every surface in the open cab slick. His foot slid on the metal floor, and became entangled with the driver's legs and the gear shift. He got turned around backwards as the engine raced and felt the first explosion of excruciating pain as the trank collapsed onto its side. His head and torso were slammed into the hard ground and he lost what was left of his grip on reality, slipping into the black.

* * *

_Paris, France_

_Present Day_

Word had come an hour after they were originally meant to depart. The storm had dissipated enough over the city to allow for take-off. One private jet had to make an emergency landing then the strip and the air would be theirs.

Helen had gone out into the wind and rain to be sure of the readiness of their pilot then returned to the quiet building. Will was asleep in the uncomfortable chair he had chosen to sit in, and was likely to fall back asleep once on the plane. Given how whirlwind the last few days had been she couldn't blame him.

In fact things at the Sanctuary changed so quickly from day to day that a good motto was to get sleep when you could, if you could. Helen knew, in Tesla's case that was next to never.

She approached him to give him the update on the status of their flight. He gave the plane a glance, nodded to her, then went back to his scribbling.

She remembered a time long ago when the thought of flying at all petrified him, regardless of his status as immortal. Times had changed. Planes had improved. He had even managed to board a commercial flight on his own in order to get to Paris. She imagined that that would go down in Tesla's personal history as his worst experience with a plane.

* * *

_Somewhere over Germany_

_March 1943_

He woke cold again. Only this time there was no rocking, or screeching or the sound of metal on metal. Instead there was a hum, steady and throbbing. He couldn't breathe, it was becoming a far too common occurrence, but he knew for a fact he wasn't underwater this time.

His arms were crossed over his chest and when he tried to kick his feet he found that he could only get so far before he hit something solid. He tried to lift his hands and found that they were chained, again, or perhaps still, as the metal cuffs had never been removed in the first place.

He tried again, with no success. The chains were stopping him, hooked and tightened against an anchor point just above his shoulders.

He was in something, chained, being transported, somehow, likely by plane.

Helen wasn't there.

He tried to take a breath and couldn't. Something was stopping him.

He thought about her hair, about the red she had chosen for this decade. Or it could have been the century. He hadn't been around her enough to know how often she…

The chains were tight…

His chest burned…

Why couldn't he breathe!

Then darkness.

* * *

_Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean_

_Present Day_

Tesla woke beside her violently, fully vamped out, bursting from his seat and crouching in the aisle, gasping for breath. She had been so close to a nap herself, her eyes burning as she stared at Elise's biography, her second time through it. Nikola's sudden move caused the book to fly, at least one of her hands searching for a gun at the waist band of her pants.

By the time she realized she didn't have a gun to pull he had already begun to calm. She watched him as his muscles slowly relaxed. Crouching lower and lower until he let go of one of the seats that had been accidentally shredded by his claws, sinking down to rest seated in the wide aisle. His claws disappeared as he leaned against the open couch on the opposite side, his eyes fading to blue. He was staring toward the back of the plane but Helen knew he wasn't seeing Will's sleeping form. He was lost, somewhere in the dream world that he had managed to slip into after boarding.

Helen rose from her seat after a moment. When he heard her move Nikola's focus snapped towards her and she froze, judging how much of him was there, and how much was still locked away so that the vampire could defend himself. She slid forward, gracefully finding a way to sit in the aisle with her feet drawn up. She reached a hand out to his knee, watched his face, then moved the same hand to take up one of his.

She was shocked to find him trembling. She hooked her thumb around his and curled her other hand over top. She felt his fingers easily surrounding her palm and when she looked up to his eyes again he was staring at her.

She saw pain, and terror, such as she had never before seen in her friend's eyes. Horrors that she had thought herself immune to given how many years she had been fighting the demons of the world. Her heart broke and she fought tears that she didn't deserve to shed.

"Oh Nikola…"


	4. Chapter 4

**I didn't realize just how dark this was going to get until I wrote this chapter. Warning! Some character torture ahead. Note the rating change.**

* * *

Chapter 4

_Somewhere Cold_

_March 1943_

Nikola had given up on ever waking up warm again so long as he was stuck in this godforsaken hell hole of a country. He'd spent fifteen minutes staring blearily at his feet before he realized that the reason they weren't touching the floor was because he was suspended.

There was a dull ache in his shoulders but the rest of him was numb. And wet. And cold.

Deliberately wet and cold. And he had been robbed of yet another coat. He wondered if Kohrber had seen fit to burn it.

He was fairly certain he was back in Korhber's clutches.

Why else would he be strung up like a slab of meat in a cold locker.

Perhaps they thought that keeping him frozen would weaken him. He hated to admit that they might be right.

He couldn't even consider vamping if he wanted to.

He hadn't been awake long before the sealed metal at the end of the empty room opened with a hiss. Without preamble a young soldier entered his prison, lifted the muzzle of a Luger toward him and depressed the trigger.

Nikola felt the impact of the bullet somewhere on his chest, but there was no pain. Breathing became a challenge after a moment and when he was forced to cough there was the brief warmth of his blood on his lips before that too froze.

The boy with the tan, Hitler Youth uniform and just a hint of remaining humanity in his eyes, backed out of the room, apparently pleased with the result of his experiment.

The Serbian coughed again, then drew a shallow breath and started shouting. He spat out with every curse he knew from English to Serbian to Russian. He tried to force his legs to move, hearing frozen ice crystals creak and shatter, ice dust bursting from the creases in his clothing. He had managed to bend both knees and started moving his hips when his shouting brought the youth back.

The door opened and he stood staring at the vampire. He said nothing for a long time, and Nikola was obliged to do the same. Waiting in the torturous nothingness for something to happen.

Then the door closed.

"No. NO NO NO!" He screamed, then jerked hard at his arms and hands. He forced his head back groaning at the pain that he could now feel from the bullet lodged in his side. His hands were bound in chains, they were blue and unmoving no matter how many times he told them to work.

He needed warmth. He needed something, anything to get the blood moving again. There were no lights in his prison but for the sunlight streaming through a solitary window. The door might have some kind of electricity running to it and unless it was twenty below in all of Germany, he assumed he had to have been in a freezer. Freezers didn't run on friction.

There had to be a current somewhere.

* * *

_Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean_

_Present Day_

"I was left there, in that hole for days, Helen." His eyes refused to focus on any one spot. His voice was angry and bitter and haunted. Her face was mere feet from his but there had been times when she had needed to move her head closer to understand his words.

"Someone would come in, either to splash buckets of ice cold tepid water over me…for fear that I had begun to thaw." His teeth came together, clenching so hard that he was forced to stop speaking. He quickly washed down a gulp of wine, emptying the tiny airplane bottle in one go. "Or to shoot me…" He finished, his head nodding in affirmation as if she might not have believed the words the first time.

"I was their experiment. Something they were keeping, literally, on ice, until they could find a way to use me."

There was a silence again. They sat together on the floor of Helen's private jet, the cabin lights out, their faces only visible thanks to the glow from the small kitchen behind them. Helen was grateful for the darkness. It hid what Nikola's revelation was doing to her.

* * *

_Somewhere in Germany_

_March 1943_

He had counted in the interim. 77 long, suffering hours had passed with only the visit of a dull faced youth and the occasional splash of freezing water to break the monotony. They had added several new holes to his anatomy, most of them still bearing the lead that made them. It was the same thing as using a slab of beef for target practice. The frozen flesh slowed the path of the bullet dramatically.

On the eve of the 78th hour he was inundated by a crew of seven soldiers dressed in the darkest, blackest uniforms he had ever seen. They entered his prison in a rush, one of them literally slipping on the slick of blood that had collected and frozen beneath the vampire. The chains were loosened and gloved hands pulled him down, bearing him from the room. He went from shadow into glaring and painful light.

He had managed to close his eyes and was bracing himself for the hurt that would come from warming again. He could hear the crackle of a fire as he was carried from room to room, the sound turning into a roar that got louder and louder. The soldiers hadn't stopped to put him down, nor did they seem interested in chatting, or demanding questions of him.

He had just heard a familiar and hated voice shouting, "Nien, Nien." Like a child watching its mother throw away a favorite toy. Then a wave of heat, followed by pain, like nothing he had ever known.

Something in him came to a boil, and there were explosions all around him. He had never pondered how he would die, or that there were so many excruciating and terrifying ways for it to happen.

He didn't have to open his eyes again to know that he was surrounded by flames that were being fed fuel the longer he stayed there, and he was the fuel. There was steam as well, mixing with the smell of burning flesh.

His fingers twitched and curled against his palms. He could feel them for a split second before the numbing cold turned into numbing heat. He tried to curl into a ball but hadn't the room for it and his feet burned. His clothes smoldering as the heat melted the ice, turned the water into steam, and set fire to the drying fibers.

Smoke filled his lungs, cruelly taunting his attempts to breathe.

He couldn't hear his own screams at first. There were too many other sensations bombarding his body for something so inconsequential to register.

The fire burned, the torture continued and still his metabolism wouldn't surrender, his DNA healing the damage even as it was being inflicted.

For the first time in 80-some years Nikola regretted being a vampire, and begged his father's deity for death.

* * *

_Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean_

_Present Day_

She held him, as tightly as she could. She had never known the man to cry in his life. Not once. She understood now why that was. Why he could go for years, watching relationships pass on, fighting for lost causes, losing everything that amounted to his life's work and keep going. Why he hadn't wept when James passed.

Her face was a wreck of tears, running makeup, running nose. She had been crying his tears long before his voice even cracked. Until he stopped speaking both of them had been in that hell. She had watched, sick with rage, as SS men shoved something they didn't understand into a furnace and tried to burn it to death.

Something that was living and breathing, that had been born a human boy, lived a human life until a fateful day in a science lab. With these new images were old ones. Stories told by survivors of the camps, chicken scratches in German that depicted inhuman acts done against the helpless, claiming it was in the name of science with a detached air. There had been others that had been burned, while still alive. She had been there to hear the stories told by the men who put their friends, siblings, even their own children into the flames.

But death had eventually claimed them. Death had been the final reprieve from the pain. Nikola hadn't been given even that mercy.

She stroked his head, unable to stop the tears, unable to erase the images. Horrified that he had been hiding it from her all that time. That he had chosen to do so instead of bringing her into his confidence.

He was trembling against her, clinging to the arm that supported his chest. The plane was quiet but she still couldn't hear any noise coming from him.

"I'm so sorry, Nikola." She said. "I am so sorry."

* * *

_Dachau Prison Camp, Munich Germany_

_March 1943_

When they found they couldn't wipe him from the earth with ice and fire they took him to another cell. This one was by far nicer. He was dumped on a cot and watched with pained satisfaction as the guards who had been tasked with escorting him there walked away with looks of disgust, wiping at the bits of burned skin and cloth that had stuck to their hands and clothing.

He couldn't really move. Every shift meant pain, the opening of freshly healed burns, some of him still smoldering even though the fires had been put out an hour before. He managed to prop himself up on the bed, breathing slowly through the process to keep the grunts to a minimum.

He had no hair left. He was sure of that. It would likely grow back but for the moment he was bald. Like Johnny, he thought wryly. Perhaps he should show up on Helen's doorstep this way. She would fall for him in moments.

He toyed with the idea, following the course of his thoughts into a place far more pleasing and painless. Slipping into that place between wakefulness and sleep, dozing with his eyes open. Ready for the next hell, but clinging softly to the brief heaven in between.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

_Dachau Concentration Camp,_ _Munich, Germany_

_March, 1943_

Four days and three hours had passed. And the healing had been slow and gradual. He was forced to move every hour, to coax his joints loose, remind his skin that it needed to be flexible, and reduce the amount of scar tissue trying to form. His hair had begun to grow back in about the 82nd hour. A shard of broken glass in the corner of his cell told him that it was coming in white, snow white.

He wondered if the color would change once his body was no longer under stress. At this point it was nothing more than a light layer of fuzz covering his healing skull. He briefly amused himself with the thought that if he had tossed himself in an incinerator in New York months ago he might have been able to avoid his unfortunate 'death'.

He finally looked his age.

Nikola was weak. Weak from hunger. Weak from the part of him that he had been carefully stuffing away into a box deep inside. The part of him that was still screaming, and hadn't stopped since the nightmare began.

When he was able to walk he padded barefoot around the cell, at first using the wall for support, then gaining his independence from it. The room was about the size and length of a boxcar, probably part of a larger complex of buildings. It might have once been used for storage but had been cleared for the sake of its newest prisoner. There were toilet facilities in the corner but no running water. No windows and only one door that locked from the outside. There was a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling that remained lit constantly. The walls were beige. The floor wood.

Almost exactly at five days the door of his cell opened. He had checked it enough times to know that it was locked and he didn't have the strength to break it down. Through the door came a bundle of clothing that he assumed was meant for him given that what he wore was nothing more than ashes and a flea infested blanket from the cot.

The clothing was also flea infested. Not to mention the lice and the smell. The blanket had been hard enough. He ignored the gray and blue striped pile and let it sit there.

Another hour passed before a young child was shoved into his room.

He assumed it was a child, and not a midget. He couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl because all the hair the child had once possessed had been crudely shaved from his or her head. The waif was young enough that there were no other bodily indicators and underneath the striped thread bare clothing, the adolescent was nothing but skin and bones, in the most literal sense.

The child entered the cell and leaned immediately against a wall, its eyes facing downward. The door was closed and the child stayed against the wall, perhaps not even aware that Nikola was in the room as well.

When his young visitor did look up it was to spot the clothes lying abandoned on the floor. Immediately the child began to undress. Nikola then discovered it was a boy, or perhaps the waste of a boy. His former clothing was discarded in favor of those meant for Nikola. He pulled them on, quickly forcing the oversized pants and tunic into complicated folds and tucks that allowed the clothing to conform to his size and shape.

Once dressed again the boy finally seemed to notice that he wasn't alone in the room.

Nikola looked into the boy's eyes and was astonished.

He recognized those eyes. He had seen them before, and had seen other eyes so similar in construction there was no mistaking the relationship.

They stared at each other for long moments. Nikola waited for some sign of recognition on the boy's face. But there was nothing. Not recognition, or curiosity or even fear. Not even hatred, or sadness. There was nothing in the boy's eyes at all.

When he grew tired of staring the boy moved to a corner where he could see both Nikola and the door at the same time, sat against the wall, and went to sleep.

The rest of that night Nikola thought about Bijou. He wondered if she had escaped Liege before Kohrber and his guards could get to her. He wondered if she was somewhere safe, curled into Marga's arms. He imagined her with the camera in her hands, years in the future. Running in the streets of America, somehow he couldn't imagine her anywhere else. He saw her in a park in New York, taking pictures of Marga's other children as they ran and played. Developing the pictures with Dane's help and showing them off around the home.

When he rose to walk around the room the boy in the corner stirred, lifting his head just high enough to observe the Serbian. To keep from upsetting him Nikola stayed near the cot, pacing between it and the door instead of the length of the room.

He had begun counting out loud, forcing his voice into action. At first there was nothing but hissing sounds coming from his vocal chords. He counted to one thousand and then down again, backwards. He recited alphabets, Greek, Romanian, Serbian, American, French, and German. The boy responded to the sound of his native language, sitting a little straighter against the wall, and then shrinking back when Nikola slipped into the language of their enemy.

The Serbian noted the reaction and when he finally sat again he arranged the blanket over him and began to speak.

He described New York, in French, naming every street, business and the names of every doorman within a five block radius of his hotel. When he started to drift, closing his eyes, finally tired enough to attempt something like sleep he was interrupted. Something shook the corner of the cot, then shook it again a moment later when he didn't immediately wake.

He raised his head from where it rested against the wall and eyed the boy. He had moved from the wall to an arm's length away from the cot, and sat now with his knees drawn to his chest, impossibly small for a boy of his age.

"You like New York?" Nikola asked.

The boy nodded.

"You'll go there someday.." Nikola told him. He knew it was a lie. And as soon as he said it he could see that the boy knew it too. But it was a nice thought.

Seconds later there were other voices in the hall. The boy skittered away from the bed, retreating to the corner and staying there, poised to defend himself.

Nikola stared at the door and waited.

When it opened two men stepped through. They were dressed in the same clothing as the boy, but they looked stronger. Like they had been fed some time that week, like they were being fed regularly. Behind them was a German soldier, dressed in the dark black uniform Nikola was seeing entirely too much of. The soldier ordered the two men to grab the boy and get rid of him.

Nikola started to rise from the cot, not fast enough to do anything but unable to sit still while Bijou's only living relative was taken away from him. The soldier didn't blink. He drew a gun and pointed it at Nikola, his eyes cold and hard and void of compassion.

Tesla knew what would come. He was so sick of pain. He was tired of death and blood and darkness, and he knew he couldn't possibly win against a gun, not as weak as he was.

Kohrber stepped into the room behind the soldier, looked to the two men holding the boy, then to the young soldier in the dark uniform.

"Put your gun away." Kohrber said, his voice calming and controlling. The soldier did as he was told.

Kohrber looked back to the boy before approaching Nikola. A glare from the vampire stopped him in his tracks before he got too close.

"You were to use him to regain your strength." Kohrber said, his expression translating that he was surprised. "I am learning so much about your species, but there is so much more to know." He held up a small paperback book and tossed it toward the cot. Nikola sneered at the worn copy of Drakula.

"Mr. Stoker's work hasn't been much help." Kohrber admitted. He turned to the door ordering that the boy be removed from the room.

The men left quickly, the boy going without resistance.

"Bring me the chair," Kohrber ordered the soldier, then glanced to the blanket Nikola had wrapped around his thin frame. "And clean clothing." When the chair arrived Kohrber sat, dismissing the soldier.

The clothes, apparently, would take longer to retrieve.

"Sit, Mr. Tesla, please. You look pale."

Nikola stood, caught between retching and launching himself at the Colonel.

Kohrber seemed almost amused by his small act of defiance, but was uncomfortable with the silence that followed his words. The blonde man looked around the room slowly, as if searching for inspiration before he became too uncomfortable to remain seated and stood. He paced around behind the chair, leaning against the back for a moment.

"Do you know where you are? Mr. Tesla? You are in Dachau. A work camp. A place for criminals and crazy people."

"That boy wasn't crazy." Nikola said.

That caught Kohrber's attention and his eyebrows shot up, pleased that he had gotten a response. "Ah…" He said satisfied, before he addressed the comment. "You had a conversation with him, did you?"

"No…before he was brought here, before you murdered his family in front of him, that boy wasn't crazy." Tesla's voice was shaking. His whole body was shaking and he couldn't make it stop. The only reprieve was to keep talking, his hands clenched tightly around the blanket. "Before you shaved his head and dumped him in this hell hole, starved him of food and his…his humanity! Damn it! That boy wasn't crazy."

"You know that boy?" Korhber snapped in response. The question caught Tesla off guard before he realized that Kohrber had no idea who the child was. Nikola didn't know if it was because the boy was less than human to the Nazi, if it was that Kohrber had never made the connection between the boy, Bijou, and that night in Liege, or if this was part of some twisted, insensible game.

"You know him? How do you know him? Are you his father? Is he one of your kind? Are all vampires Jews, or are all Jews, vampires?" The questions came in an angry stream, Kohrber's face starting to redden.

There was a knock on the door. The soldier stood in the opening holding clothing. Real clothing. Trousers and shirt and jacket. Shoes, socks. They looked clean and recently laundered.

Nikola stared at the clothing, still baffled by Kohrber's questions. He wondered how many of them had come from the Colonel and how many had he been ordered by someone higher up to ask.

"Get rid of them. Burn them." Kohrber said, turning his face quickly so that he could watch Tesla react. "Unless you want to tell me something."

"Nothing you've asked me makes sense!" Nikola shouted, narrowing his eyes, choking back bile. It was like being stuck in a vacuum, where the negative space was the idiocy of the Nazi party, and he the matter being sucked into the endless void.

Kohrber turned away, his anger tightly controlled as he left the room without another word. The soldier watched him leave, opened his mouth to ask the Colonel what he should do with the clothing, then in a rare act of compassion, tossed the pile into the room, shutting and locking the door of the cell behind him.

It took Nikola an hour to get dressed.

When he was done, he dragged his cot across the room to the place where the boy had been crouched, sat cross-legged on the mattress and stared up at the light bulb. A plan beginning in his mind.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

_Present Day_

_Old City_

It was a cool night. They had just gone through a lengthy period of scorching hot weather, and while the Sanctuary was air conditioned, Helen had chosen to concentrate most of the electricity in the complex on the levels containing the abnormals. The rest of her team and those abnormals that could be in the warmer climate, were forced to sweat it through their daily routine.

When the heat wave finally broke she gave Will, Biggie, Henry and Kate the night off. They had begun to snap at each other and she knew they needed a chance to blow off steam. With the reduction in temperature outside, Helen had allowed the air conditioning to be resumed throughout the Sanctuary. They had closed the many opened windows and by night fall the complex was livable again.

She had been focused on getting work done in her office before checking on the SHU and taking over the midnight feedings herself for once. She was fully determined to get the night's work done so that she could enjoy the next morning free of responsibilities, at least for a little while.

At ten o'clock the grandfather clock chimed and broke her concentration. She tried to ignore it but a thought had popped into her head when it went off that she couldn't let go of. She stared at the budget spread sheet on her computer screen for five minutes more before she realized she was wasting time.

Helen sat back in her seat, breathed in the wonder of cool air blasting toward her thanks to a fan on her desk. She pulled her hair back and up away from her neck and closed her eyes to track down the illusive thought that had burst into her mind.

An hour of research later and she had a name and an address. She was heading through the halls, excited, a little perturbed, slightly angry, and perhaps even afraid when she bumped into Biggie.

"Whoa, baby." Was the only comment at first as Big Foot took in her appearance. The reddened eyes, the scraps of paper in her hands, the speed at which she had been travelling down an empty hallway. The lack of emergency alarms blaring. "Shredder eat the budget reports again?" He asked.

"No…no. Nothing like that I've just got to-"

"He's not in his lab." Biggie said.

"No it's nothing to do with Henry."

"I wasn't talking about Henry." Biggie said and stood with a slight smile hidden behind thick lips. He grunted a few times, a noise that began to sound like a chuckle as he turned to continue down the hall.

Magnus felt her cheeks start to burn, and wasn't at all amused.

"Where is he then?" She demanded.

"Roof…" Biggie said, over his shoulder, nodding his head once toward the ceiling.

"Really?" Helen asked, shocked. She had never known Tesla to find reason to go to the roof. He wasn't the outdoorsy type but the sudden drop in temperature might have been lure enough to draw the vampire from his den.

She was about to ask Bigfoot how it was that he knew Tesla was on the roof but he had already disappeared from the hallway.

She found not just Tesla, but most of the rest of her key staff on the roof. When she emerged into the cool night air she heard laughter. Henry and Will with Kate's higher pitched voice in the mix. Then Tesla's voice jumping into the gap, saying something she couldn't quite understand and more laughter following it.

Kate, Will and Henry laughing together was no surprise, she thought starting toward the sounds. The three of them laughing at Tesla was a shock. That the four of them were on the roof enjoying themselves without blowing anything up…

"No no no, those need to go at the end." Tesla's voice directed.

"Oh!" Kate sighed expectantly. "Are these the green ones? The really big ones?"

"You should'a seen the simulation. Especially when I put hydrogen into the mix." Henry told her, his volume dropping a little in conspiracy.

"Yes, I believe the disaster of the Hindenburg comes to mind." Tesla said. Henry and Kate laughed and Helen finally weaved her away out of the complex maze of chimneys and antennae coming to a stop a few yards for the eastern edge of the roof.

Kate and Henry were maneuvering a length of PVC into place. The top half was leaning against one of the parapets, the bottom had part of an aluminum funnel attached to it. About twelve similar lengths of PVC had been set up in varying spots along the roof's edge. Tesla, wine glass in hand, walked along the low stone wall itself, lording over the operation passively.

Will stood off to the side with a pile of PVC pipes, sliding aluminum foil wrapped parcels into each one after he had attached fuses.

They were all so wrapped up in their work that it took them a full minute before Kate and Henry were turned enough to face her and notice her presence among them.

"Uh oh." Kate said, which drew Tesla and Will's attention. Tesla immediately grinned at her and jumped down from the parapet managing not to spill any of his wine.

"Helen! You're early, but you might as well join us now that you're up here."

"Wha-"

"No no. It's a surprise and we all know how those work." Tesla said guiding her to a lawn chair that had been set up with half a dozen others near the center of the roof.

For a brief moment Tesla spared a glance to the others, who were still frozen in guilty indecision. He twirled a single finger in the air, indicating that they should get back to it, before he turned his attention to Magnus.

"Nothing better for a summer's night, eh?" He asked, his eyebrows jumping.

Helen snapped her mouth closed and narrowed her eyes at the Serbian before she reassessed the materials collected on her roof.

"These aren't…" She said finally and heard Tesla's cheery, "Mmhm!"

There were a number of reasons why shooting off fireworks from the Sanctuary roof would be a bad, strike that, very bad idea. The biggest problem she saw at the moment was that she didn't know why Nikola had turned her employees into an explosives crew.

"Why?" She asked, putting her hands on her hips. The paper she had come to show Tesla crinkled when she did, reminding her of its presence.

Tesla's eyes were drawn briefly to it before he refocused on her. He grinned at her, shrugged and asked, "Why not?"

Helen sighed and shook her head watching as Kate and Will carefully set a handful of loaded tubes to the side as there were no more places to lean them anymore. She noticed that they had chosen the side of the Sanctuary that faced the river, instead of choosing to explode things over buildings and homes.

The three moved to the loading table, adding varying bits of metal and powder to tubes of aluminum foil temporarily supported by small sections of PVC. Once the foil was full they secured the ends with a complicated series of folds, slipped the cylinder of foil out of the four inch section of PVC pipe and into a longer, four foot section before it was set to the side.

Fundimental, and she could only assume, functional as there were four highly intelligent adults putting the explosives together.

"Was Biggie sent to find me or distract me?" She asked after a moment. Tesla, in the process of sipping from his glass, shrugged again.

"He had mentioned something about snacks for the children. You are quite early, we haven't even begun the fun part."

Helen slowly turned toward him her mouth once again open in shock. "You mean I was to be drawn by the sounds of explosions?"

Tesla had a look of impish delight on his face that was so infectious she could hardly ignore it.

"Happy 4th of July, Helen." Nikola said, his voice dropping a little and affecting a sense of intimacy between them.

When Big Foot returned with cold beer, bags of popcorn and chips the group settled back into their chairs. Tesla and Henry insisted on being the ones to ignite the first few, just to be certain that their formula worked correctly. The first three exploded high above the sanctuary in a spectacular show of red, white and blue.

After the first ten had been set off Kate and Biggie declared it was their turn and went about setting up the pipes along the edge of the roof.

Helen realized that it was July 4th, but only by an hour. Somehow the time had slipped by since their return from France and she had completely lost track of the days. Between watching the fireworks, and watching the people that had become family over the years, she found herself contented for the first time in months.

Kate and Biggie worked together seamlessly setting off each firework. Henry and Will bet over how big each explosion would be, how high it would fly, what colors would be produced. Tesla stood slighltly apart from them, watching the skies. His face bright, amused, returned to the same old Tesla.

She thought about the paper in her hands; about the pandora's box that she had been intending to reopen. She wondered if it was worth it. Magenta, green, blue and white exploded over head, their splendor echoed in the glassy surface of the river. Tesla turned to look around and caught Helen staring at him and grinned a little more holding her gaze.

It wasn't worth it. She decided. She liked things the way they were, and for a brief moment she was going to be selfish and think about herself instead of the rest of the world. She shoved the paper into her pocket and forgot about it.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

_Dachau Concentration Camp,_ _Munich, Germany_

_April, 1943_

"You must feel hunger. And yet it has been over three weeks since you have had anything to eat, and you refuse the resources I provide for you. You do not drink according to the guards assigned to observe you. They tell me that you cry out during the night, in horrible pain, and even now I can see that you are suffering." If Kohrber felt any discomfort from what he saw or what he said it didn't show. The man paced back and forth in front of the vampire, his boots grinding at the wet gravel beneath him. His voice echoing through the open air.

The barracks Nikola knelt before felt as empty as the court yard but he knew they weren't. There were SS Guards in the twenty barrack buildings behind him and just to the west, past a row of hedges and some electrified barbed wire were over thirty more barracks. But those didn't hold the SS. Those were the source of the 'resources' Kohrber had been putting into his cell each day.

Children, men, women. Each one looking paler, thinner, and deader on his feet than the last. In fact one of them had died. Nikola had been too weak to do anything about it but watch. The man was a coughing, slobbering, quaking mess when he was shoved into the windowless room. An hour later he was begging Nikola to end his life in barely recognizable Polish. Then he died. Nikola had managed enough energy to push the man's folded hands from the covers of his cot before he lay down, and wondered what it felt like to die, and stay dead.

Most of Kohrber's interrogations happened towards the end of the day, and they had always happened inside the confines of Nikola's cell. Why he had been dragged out into the rain, Nikola didn't know, but he figured it was in Kohrber's nature to make things as miserable as possible and if the opportunity came to drench a starving vampire, well…why the hell not.

He had been chained again, of course. Kohrber wouldn't take chances. The chains might as well have been set into concrete.

"Is it your morality that keeps you from taking their blood? Do you wish not to take responsibility for ending a life?" Kohrber asked, shifting his stance and pulling his weapon. He nodded behind where Nikola knelt and a guard stepped forward pushing a wafer thin man ahead of him.

The prisoner was about Nikola's age, thirty but appearing 80. He wore the striped clothing of all his brethren, but unlike the political prisoners who wore red or green tags, this one wore a yellow star. That made him a Jew.

Not all of the prisoners shoved into his cell had been Jews. Not all of them had been emaciated. In fact the last one had been rather large and rotund and even healthy looking.

_He had worn the tattered, striped clothing of the prisoners but the holes in his clothes were patched. The tag he wore was red, and he had been allowed the dignity of keeping his hair, wearing a hat and coat. He had been shoved into the cell where Nikola was, talking gaily with one of the guards until he realized that he wasn't on his way to see the commandant of the camp but into a windowless storage room with a single occupant. _

_Nikola had been up at that time. He'd still had the energy to move on his own and he was on his fifth lap around the cell when the man stumbled in. Their eyes met for a moment. Neither had a clue who the other was. The door closed loudly and they both looked to the blank, wooden frame, then back, warily at one another. _

_Then, after a long moment, the bigger man scoffed, looked at Nikola with disgust and straightened his jacket, surveying the room. _

_"Well you're not a Jew." He said after a moment, speaking in low German, looking to the bed with distaste, before he searched the dark corners again. "They wouldn't have you separated from your kind if you were. And you aren't a political prisoner." _

Political prisoner, Nikola thought, remembering. The prisoner and the guard stopped even with Tesla, the guard forced to stay with the prisoner because the walking skeleton could clearly not stand on his own. Nikola had begun to lean, himself, just kneeling there. Having to turn and watch the prisoner would have been all that was needed to unbalance him and toss him into the wet gravel. Nikola didn't wish to be the reason for his own added discomfort and chose to keep his eyes trained on the blonde hell before him.

_His newest visitor paused, surprised at the lack of response from Tesla then asked, "Tu parles francais?" _

_Nikola kept walking, trying to ignore the sound of the man's pulse. Trying to ignore the almost overpowering stench of his sweat, or the sweet ichor of his blood underneath. _

_"Вы говорите нарусском?"_

_His visitor was baffled, put off by the lack of friendliness perhaps. Nikola wasn't about to make nice with someone who might be food in seconds. He hadn't expected himself to hold out this long and he knew every new moment would be harder. He put one foot in front of the other, his right shoulder against the rough plaster of the wall. _

_"Nie maszpolskich!" _

"So. If you will not kill them yourself. I will do it for you, yes?" Kohrber said, then raised his gun and fired.

The bullet hit the prisoner, just above the eyes. His head snapped back, most of the back of his skull bursting backwards and splattering against the building behind them. The soldier stepped away in surprise and disgust, staring down at the sleeve of his uniform, now decorated with a mix of blood and gray matter.

_The man had a healthy pink glow to his cheeks. The way someone should look when they've been out enjoying the cool weather of spring time. He wasn't sickly pale, or near blue from lack of sunlight and exercise. His portly nature suggested that he got more than his fair share of three meals a day and probably with a good amount of starch and meat involved. _

_Tesla kept walking. The big man kept talking, returning to his poor German._

_"I have been in this prison for over a year, and I have never been to the guard barracks until this day." _

_Nikola's eyes flitted toward the big man and his visitor smiled and nodded. _

_"Oh yes. That's where you are. In the officer's building outside the SS Barracks. You aren't with the other prisoners. That makes you special, whoever you are." _

_The big man started toward the corner that Nikola was slowly vacating, perhaps to investigate the toilet facilities provided. Nikola did what he could to move faster, trying to avoid smelling the man anymore clearer, avoid letting the distance between them close any more than it already had. It wouldn't take much, not hardly at all, for him to sink his teeth…even his human teeth would be sufficient. The blood would be warm thanks to all the fat insulating his veins. _

_Fresh, warm, Nikola rushed to his bunk, gripping hard at the edge and clinging to the bed for dear life, trying to shut down his senses. _

He could smell the blood. The prisoner's body had landed almost directly in front of him and the gore that should have been repulsing him, only seemed to draw him closer. The blood was warm and steaming in the cooler air and Tesla was disturbed and enticed in the same twisted moment. The part of him that had never been human desperately wanted to lunge forward, toward the fresh crimson staining the ground. The rest of him overpowered it. He glared at Kohrber, anger starting to boil, and used whatever it provided to push himself to his feet as the first distant rumble of thunder sounded.

_Nikola's move startled the big man and he stayed where he was against the far wall, closely watching Tesla. "You are a peculiar one." He said before he found a spot on the far wall where he could lean and slowly slide to the floor. "Word has been passing through the barracks about you. Everyone who is selected to come to the SS Barracks does not return. Did you know that? At first it was speculated that these people were holding secrets and that the SS men were torturing them until they cracked, then sending them to Berlin. But…that didn't make sense. They were taking Jews." The man said, laughing as he spread his hands. _

_"And children and women, what would they know? So…then we thought. Perhaps there is some sort of testing happening here. As our scientists were doing in our own labs before the war. Testing new weapons. Oh…" The man said, as if Tesla had at some point conveyed disapproval. "Don't think we are only gloomy. We had thought of good things…perhaps testing new medicines. Or granting freedom to those that were chosen. But…in prison, no one is given freedom. And freedom is never freedom until the reason you are in prison in the first place has been eradicated…and we are still at war, yes?" The big man chuckled before falling silent. _

_Somehow his voice helped. The consistent tone, and the need to concentrate on the poorly pronounced German distracted Tesla from the panic he had begun to feel and the vampire had been able to dial back the smells and sounds that were tormenting him._

_"Now, though, now I see that you are the focus. You are what this experimental group has been for. We are each being tested against you. But for what reaction I wonder." _

Anger may not have been what Kohrber had been looking for but it seemed to delight the blonde none the less. He lifted his gun again, and Tesla waited for the sights to fall even with his chest.

"You won't take a Jew then. Nor a politician, a Pole, not a child, or a woman." The trigger was pulled, the gun sounded, thunder rolled and the SS soldier that had been standing next to Tesla moments ago collapsed wordlessly over top the body of the Jew.

Nikola flinched but he didn't look to the bodies. He kept his eyes on Kohrber, smiling as he felt the first far away tingle of an electrical charge.

_He didn't know if he could do it. He hadn't tried. Even if he could shift it might not do him any good. He had so little strength as it was. Perhaps not everything then. Perhaps only the claws, or not even those, but the eyes. _

_Even as he thought about it he felt them shift. The transition, which normally felt empowering and pleasurable, was this time painful. It would have been worse had he transformed fully. He let the big man see his blackened eyes, focusing intently on him and trying not to see the pulse beating in the big man's neck. The nervous sweat beading on his forehead. _

_"My…God…" The big man said, leaning forward, pushing himself to his feet in an awkward three point turn before he took several steps towards Tesla. Nikola backed across the bed and against the wall hurriedly and his action stopped the approach of his visitor. _

_"Yes….yes. I see you wish to avoid me." The man said, nodding and narrowing his eyes in thought. _

_Nikola could hold the partial transformation for only so long and with a soft grunt he let his eyes return to their usual silver blue. He was hit with a wave of nausea and fatigue and was grateful for the wall keeping him upright. _

_"You wish to avoid me…and yet you are weak. Perhaps I am the solution to that problem. And I am a temptation…" The big man paced, figuring it out. _

_He was the strangest prisoner Nikola could have imagined coming across. Highly intelligent, polite, conversational and tri-lingual at the very least._

Kohrber waited a long time, his gun lowering until the muzzle faced the ground, the barrel tapping against the side of his leg as he watched the vampire.

"No…even the finest and purest blood does not interest you. There is no guilt in taking from the dead. And yet you stand there…dying of hunger, refusing the buffet!"

_Tesla's head rolled a little to the side as he considered the prisoner, who considered him right back. _

_"What was your crime?" The man asked finally, pointing a chubby finger at the vampire. _

_Nikola took in a deep and heavy breath and said, "Spy. Yours?" _

_The large man smiled, the expression changing as he grit his teeth. "Treason. Accessory, to an attempted assassination." _

Nikola was still smiling and it was unnerving Kohrber. The storm was drawing closer, the rain beating down harder around them. The blood of the soldier and the Jew mixing in the dust. Becoming one blood, one death, one slain piece of humanity that was no longer capable of seeing itself as one breed or another, perfect or imperfect. Neither the soldier nor the Jew was more or less deserving of life. They were both slated to be dust in a matter of years. The same dust.

Just like Kohrber would be dust.

_"You have been here for weeks."_

_"Yes, and on the run for longer." Nikola told him, slumping against the wall. _

_"Why do they keep you? What do they hope to gain?" His companion asked, upright again and pacing in the small room. His questions had begun to change however, there was something the big man knew. _

_"Power." Tesla said, then his eyes rose to the light hanging in the center of the room. "But there are some things they don't know about me…"_

_His fellow prisoners quirked his head to the side then looked up toward the bulb. When he returned his gaze to the pale Serbian he was greeted with a tired, but devious grin. _

_"Ever heard of Nikola Tesla?" The vampire asked. "Father of electricity." _

Lightning scattered across the clouds and Nikola raised his hands above his head. He wasn't a natural attraction for the lightning, he knew that much. The buildings were taller than he was and the trees taller still. But he'd always had an extraordinary ability to control the electrical impulses buzzing around his brain and he used that ability with what remained of his strength. He sent out a polarized call to the ions in the clouds.

He made himself the most attractive target in the camp, and reached out for every source of electricity he could get. He reached for the electrified fence and the radio towers. He reached for the electric lines along the perimeter of the complex and the ample voltage in the sky. He opened his fingers, using the metal of the chain to send out his siren call, bracing himself for what would be the most electricity he had ever conducted in his life.

_The big man stared at the figure on the cot. Snow white hair had grown about three centimeters from his skull, though the roots were starting to darken. His eyes were sunken back and there were bags under them dark enough to look like smudges of coal. The already thin man looked thinner, if possible, in the worn pants and shirt, and the stubble that had grown on his face was patchy and gray. There were lines of pain and sorrow on his forehead and at the edges of his eye lids. _

_But it was the eyes themselves that captured the big man's fascination. Clear, powerful blue eyes that translated the intelligence of a genius, the experience and wisdom of an octogenarian, the strength of a man who had been tried, tested, and had proven himself to his own satisfaction with no need to satisfy anyone else. A man very much like himself, the big man thought. _

_"I read that you had died, only a few months ago, an old, old man." The big man said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. _

_Nikola's eyes widened slightly and his back pulled away from the wall. The big man seemed to acknowledge his reaction and Nikola felt the surge of energy again that pulled him to his feet. _

_"It was you!" Nikola said, pointing a finger. Outside a spritz of rain hit the roof and the sides of the building signaling the beginning of a storm._

The lightning hit. The chain snapped taut as his arms were forced apart. Every muscle went rigid, freezing him temporarily with pain, heat and cold, every nerve ending frying and healing and frying again. He threw his head back to compensate, struggling to keep his feet under him. He could see the blinding light of the electricity but nothing more.

It arced and snapped and bunched around him wildly. Reacting the way all electricity did. The only thing keeping it from grounding into the earth were the thick rubber shoes he'd been given before the guards had pulled him from the cell. Shoes that another prisoner had been wearing.

Even as it weakened him, Tesla could feel it strengthening him. It wasn't the nourishment he desperately needed, but it was power, familiar to him, and more than enough for what he had planned. With a groan he transformed, jerking his head forward to focus on Kohrber again, slowly lowering the chain, pulling the power with him as he did.

_The man in the cell with Tesla smiled a little and shrugged. "It was never my intention that you should come here of course." The man said. He had just as much surprise in his voice as Nikola, but he did a better job of hiding it. _

_"I was told a great deal about you before I decided to have the note delivered. I wanted someone like you on our side, but Gregory…" The big man shook his head, chuckling softly. "Gregory said you were more likely to go after money than patriotism or power." _

_Tesla instantly felt shame mixed with guilt. The faces of Georg and Dane and the other Belgian freedom fighters flashed before his eyes. He thought of Bijou again, and the little boy who might have once been her only living relative, but who was likely gone now too. He looked away from the big man. _

_"It would seem that you are in it now for more than just money, Professor. Yes?" his voice softening a little. _

He nearly had the chain to the ground when Kohrber caught on. The German Colonel had raised his gun and fired a dozen shots into the center of the brilliantly lit sphere of electricity before everything around him disappeared in a sonic blast that took him off his feet.

Kohrber flew back, his head impacting the base of the pole on which the Nazi flag had started to smolder and burn, and lost consciousness, his body going limp in a pile.

Nikola let go of the chain. Just forcing his fingers to release required effort. He stayed on his hands and knees, delighting in the cool sensation of the rain as it splattered against his steaming clothing, cooling his burning skin.

Moments later there were hands on his shoulders pulling him to his feet and toward the back of a waiting truck.

_The soldiers were coming. Nikola had a plan. It had involved borrowing the big man's shoes for a bit, and would mean great risk to himself. It might mean liberation for him, for the big man, for all the souls being tortured there in the camp. Or it could mean none of that. _

_"The important thing is that you are removed from this place. And allowed to return to London. Gregory had other plans for you." The big man said offering Nikola the shoes that were a size tighter than he could call comfortable. Tesla forced his feet into them, distracted. He had been, to some degree, manipulated into coming to Belgium in the first place and he was deciding whether or not to be angry about it. _

_As much importance as he normally put on his pride he had come to more than a few realizations since his 'death' in New York and what he might have considered his second death in Europe. The first of those things was that there was something more important than pride; a concept he had never before believed in called 'honor'. While he strongly disapproved of war, no matter the impetus, he had been shown that one side of this particular war had no honor. If men like Das Fuhrer and Colonel Kohrber were going to continue to be at the forefront, this war had to end. _

_And he was now determined to be a part of that effort._

_"What of you? How will you get out?" Nikola asked, watching the door, listening intently to the approach of the guards. _

_"I hope to be the one helping you escape. Barring that…" The man shrugged and straightened his jacket again after putting on the shoes Nikola had formerly been wearing. _

_"Who are you?" Nikola asked finally, the question cut off prematurely as the door opened and two guards came in to grab hold of the big man and escort him from the room. _

_"Stefan.." He had time to say, before the door was closed and Nikola was left on his own. _

_It would be several hours of listening to the rain fall before Kohrber came for him, surprising Tesla when the Colonel ordered his men to take the vampire outside, into the storm. _


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

_Old City_

_Present Day_

The book arrived at the end of the month. Helen had forgotten about it, and about the scrap of paper she had shoved into her pocket on the eve of the 4th, and she stood for a long time in her office, staring at the book before she remembered its significance. There was a note in it, from one of her operatives in Paris. _We could not find him in France, because he never returned there. –G_

The package had come from New York, and the note had been typed and reprinted by the publisher that had sent the book. She spent most of the following evening reading through it. It wasn't a thick tome but she devoured each word more than once before she could put it down. She would have to remember to ask for another copy in the original French.

She sent out e-mails. One to her French operative, one to the publishing company in New York, another to the author's agent, who it seemed, was also his daughter, yet another e-mail to Bijou in Paris. She didn't tell Bijou about the book. She wanted to let Nikola make that decision.

She went to his loft expecting him to be there tinkering as he had been of late. He wasn't there, nor was he in the wine cellar, and when she ran across Kate wheeling away at the punching bag in the rec room she said she hadn't seen him. Kate was the only member of her staff still up, or rather, she amended, up this early. It was five in the morning.

Where then was Nikola?

When she entered the library she experienced an extraordinary moment of déjà vu. Given how long she had been alive, déjà vu was expected, but this was more like time had stopped and reversed itself.

As she ventured into the massive room she realized not everything was the same as the last time. There was a table scattered with books but it was a different table, and the scatter of books less extensive. The gaps in the shelves were there but different shelves, slightly different subjects.

There was a chair in the middle of the room, set apart from all the tables but there was no silent, brooding vampire sitting in it staring at the ceiling. In fact the vampire was nowhere in sight. Helen felt her stomach churn, afraid he had already left on another goose chase.

She wondered if he had somehow found out what she had. If he had decided to head off to New York to confront yet another specter from his past. She had just reached the table of books when she heard his voice behind her.

"Good morning." He said, and there was a quiet, tired smile in his voice.

Helen turned, faster than she would have liked, trying to affect casual a second later.

Tesla gave her an amused look over the rim of a tea cup, taking a sip of something that steamed into his face.

"Tea? Surprising." She said, wincing a moment later at the unnecessary bite on the tail end of the comment. Perhaps she was more upset than she would have at first admitted.

Tesla read her like a book, showing mild concern and confusion before he sauntered through the door and into the library. He set the cup down on its saucer and placed the saucer on the first table as he advanced on Helen.

"I felt nostalgic." He said, shrugging a little. His spirit slightly dampened now.

Helen pressed her lips together and reached a hand out as he drew close to her, grasping his arm and squeezing slightly in apology.

His eyes jumped up to meet hers before he moved to close some of the open books on the table. She was watching his face and not his hands and jumped when she felt the book being tugged from her grasp.

"Dreams From Dachau, A Boy's Memoir. By Daniel Brouse." Nikola read, flipping the book open and thumbing through the pages before he turned it over to stare at the author's photo on the back. It took him a moment before he gasped softly. "My God."

"He changed his name. After Dachau he decided that there was nothing good about being a Jew. When he was freed he dropped Bronstien, calling himself after one of the other prisoners in the same barracks with him."

"He survived…" Nikola said, staring at the picture. The face had aged decades but the eyes were the same, and the similarities in appearance to Elise were impossible to ignore.

"Because of you, Nikola." Helen said carefully, perching on the edge of the table so that she could look up at the Serbian.

"No…" Nikola shook his head. "No…because of me he might have been killed."

"How did you escape the prison camp?" Helen asked.

"Lightning…" Nikola said, staring at Helen, wondering how she could possibly know. He'd said nothing to her about it. There had been no witnesses but for Kohrber and he was dead.

"An electromagnetic surge that wiped out power to the entire camp for an hour." Helen said nodding.

"Yes but in minutes I had been packed away into the back of a truck and driven from the camp Helen, there was no effort to made to save anyone." He insisted, shaking his head at the mere fancy of the idea.

Helen held up a finger and reached for the book cracking it open to a dog-eared page.

"Helen, I don't think I-"

"Nikola…sit."

A slight smirk came to the corner of his mouth before the vampire pulled at the back of the chair nearest where Helen was perched. He sat in it and looked up to her expectantly.

She began to read.

"If anyone left the camp it was death. I had only been there a month and I knew that. When we were separated into two lines the ones that didn't go to work never came back. The sick were taken to the infirmary and never came back. One day I was taken. I was led away from my barracks by the prisoners in charge of us and I knew I wouldn't come back. It would be death. Finally. I wanted it.

I walked with the guards out of the gates. The electric gates that so many men would run against to die. I wouldn't have to choose that way of death. I would die a noble death. I was sure of it. I expected to go to where the smoke rose every morning and afternoon but we turned away from there. We headed for other barracks.

There were soldiers in those barracks that wore dark black uniforms with skulls on them. They looked like demons and that was how I knew that we had all been banished to hell for our ill deeds. I knew then that it was truly my fault that Mama had died. This was my punishment. I welcomed it.

I was taken to a small room that had only a single light in it. There were no windows. There was a place to use the toilet and clothes on the floor. They were better than the rags I had been dressed in and I put them on, making them fit as Julius had showed me.

I saw that there was a dead man in the room too. He had been covered partially in a blanket and his eyes were open and staring. His hair had been burnt off too and there was nothing but-"

Helen stopped, her voice catching. Tesla had been so lost in the memories. He looked up to her surprised then held out a hand. "You don't have to-"

Helen shook her head, took his hand in her own and pressed it back toward the table, holding on to him as she turned her eyes back to the page.

"There was nothing but small white hairs on his head. I did not know why I was in the room with the dead man, but there were no soldiers there. There were no prisoner guards with whips or older men shoving me, telling me to look lively or I would die. I went to the wall where it was safest and crouched down so that I could sleep.

I do not know if it was a dream. Or if it was real. Late that night I heard the dead man speak. When I opened my eyes I saw that he had not moved from his death bed. But his lips moved in my dream, and his voice spoke. The words did not make sense at first; his voice was raw and rasping. Just the sort of sound that a dead man makes.

The dead man spoke many languages. He even spoke my own, and the language of the black coated demons. I thought it must be part of being dead, that when you die you are given the gift of knowing everything. I thought, that is why we get smarter as we get older. Preparing for the day that we die and can know everything there is to know.

He seemed to like my language the most. He spoke of a place of wonder. Tall buildings. Cars driving fast down wide open streets. Women with white teeth, men with fine hats and coats, walking freely down paved, white sidewalks. Not forced to wear stars. Not forced to walk only at certain hours, or hide in attics with their families, in constant fear.

There was no fear in this wonderful place. There were parks with green grass and giant trees that, in the winter time, were decorated with every bauble and ornament possible. Places to ice skate and throw a ball and play with marbles and skip a rope. Places to eat at every corner of the street. Smells and noises and voices and sights that ignited in me a passion so powerful I thought I might explode.

And then the dead man stopped speaking. Here is why I am not sure it was a dream. I remembered the silence. The world that had opened to me was suddenly dark again, slammed behind a locked door because the dead man had laid his head on his death bed and gone to sleep.

I wanted it too much to let it die. I wanted the dead man to speak, to bring back that beautiful world. Paint it brightly like a work on canvas so that I could feel the beginnings of hope once more."

Helen stopped briefly. Her eyes had begun to tear and she had to wipe them from her face so that she could see the words on the page. But she couldn't use the hand holding Tesla's. He had begun to squeeze it so hard she couldn't feel the tips of her fingers anymore. She used the sleeve of her jacket instead then righted the book and continued on.

"I was braver in that moment than I had ever been. I went to the death bed and I rattled it. I woke the dead man. Brought him back from his deep slumber. The dead man looked at me and I could tell that he knew I was there in the room. That he wasn't completely dead. How could he be if he saw me, and I was living.

He asked me if I liked the place he had described. Did I like this magical New York. I loved it. I nodded my head at the dead man and saw his teeth when he smiled.

"You'll go there some day." The dead man told me. Can dead men lie? I think, yes. They are dead, no longer bound by the rules of life. What is there to stop them? The dead man lied when he said what he said. But it wasn't like any other lie. The dead man believed the lie, if for just one second. And the dead man knew something about that lie that I didn't.

The men in the black coats came for me then. It was as though they had started to smell the stench of bourgeoning new hope and were dispatched to quash it once more. I was taken from the dead man and out into the yard. It was still night, but I knew we were headed for the place where the bodies were burned.

I couldn't go there. Not anymore. I had to get back to the dead man. I had to hear about New York. I had to know where this place was. I would go there.

The men in the black coats didn't think much of me. I could see that. And when they were distracted I stomped at their boots and broke free of their hold. I wanted to visit the dead man again."

There was more she wanted to read but it was a chapter away. Helen shifted from the table top and sat in one of the chairs, her hand still captured by Nikola's. With the other one she flipped through the pages.

In the silence Nikola spoke.

"He didn't recognize me, when they brought him into the cell." Nikola laughed softly. "I guess that makes sense. He thought I was a ghost."

She found what she was looking for and read again.

"I loved it when it rained because I could use the mud to draw on the barracks walls. I would draw funny things sometimes to entertain the other boys. But it had to be hidden, down low where the guards couldn't see it.

I would draw New York too. Making up things that didn't exist but that sounded as good and bright and hopeful as New York had sounded. Giant flowers that towered over the buildings. People and animals that had wings and could fly from building to building.

That morning I couldn't remember New York anymore. I had tried to draw more pictures, of what the dead man had told me, but every picture looked like the barrack. I couldn't see the women and men with smiling faces. All I could see were the faces of the sick around me.

The dream was gone. The dead man was on the other side of the fence. It was then that I knew I had to die.

Death would bring me to the dead man. Perhaps New York, this wondrous land, would be on the other side of death as well.

The rain fell, drenching me. I walked to the fence. The men around me stopped their work to watch. None of them knew my name, or what barrack I was from. I was just another in a long line of those that gave up on living. That preferred death to life. But this wasn't leaving behind life. This was moving on to something greater. I knew that New York, and all the knowledge and freedom and joy that it possessed would be waiting for me once I touched that fence.

The fence would free me. Had I the capacity to understand irony at that age I would have seen it and laughed. I finally had the answer.

I flung myself at the fence and for a brief moment I felt something. Pain, excruciating and deep that cut through the numbness. I heard the crackle of the electricity, and the roar of thunder and lightning, and smelled my own flesh as it was charred.

Then there was nothing. Oh but it wasn't death that caused the nothing.

No. I was still alive. I could still feel the pain. I could still smell the burns. I could still feel the cooling rain. Something else had happened.

I reached out a hand and put my fingers against the barbed metal. Nothing. The fence was dead.

Had I raised an alarm in that moment there might have been an escape. When I finally returned to the barrack I was too ashamed to admit that I had not taken that opportunity, and said nothing. I hid the burns from the other men.

Later I heard someone say that lightning had struck somewhere in the camp. One of the men said that it had struck the flag pole in the SS barracks. He said the swastika had burned."

Nikola was silent when Helen put the book down. He had let go of her hand finally and sat sideways in his chair, staring at the floor. She could see him working for control, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.

"He uh…" Nikola began finally, looking to Helen briefly before he asked, "He was liberated?"

Helen nodded and Nikola sucked in a shaky breath, reaching into a breast pocket and fishing out a handkerchief that he handed to her.

She took it but didn't wipe her eyes, watching her friend. Ready to answer the questions she knew he had.

"What happened..where did he go?"

"He wanted to go to New York. He begged and begged one the soldiers that liberated them to take him to America. One of the men finally took pity on him and wrote on his papers that Daniel was American, and should be returned there. He was thirteen. His father had been a shoe maker and Daniel had already begun to learn the trade. He offered his services to a cobbler in Queens and in his spare time he would save money to buy canvasses and paints."

"He became an artist?" Nikola asked, struggling for brightness, pleased for a brief moment before the dam broke. He moved to his feet, trying to escape notice, desperate not be seen but Helen wouldn't let him. She rose as well and moved with him, pulling at his arm, guiding him into her embrace, pulling him hard against her where he sobbed.

"You saved them." She said, her tears falling as well. But her voice was strong, as proud as she had ever been of the Serbian and determined to force him into accepting the truth. "Nikola Tesla…" She said again, not letting him loose. "You saved both of those children. You gave them hope, you helped them find purpose. They were and are successful, healthy adults. And they would not have been had it not been for you."

She felt his hands bunching into fists but he wasn't pulling away. He shuddered against her, his body shaking each time he choked, as if Helen had finally found her way into the secret place where Nikola hid his pain, and had begun ripping out the hidden cancers that plagued him for so long. It was painful, but the goal was healing.

They stood that way for a while, and Helen could think of no other place that she wanted to be. When Nikola finally pulled away she let him, keeping her hand on his arm until she could see his face. Until she was certain there was no shame there. She smiled when she saw it and pulled him near her so that she could kiss his cheek, using the handkerchief he had given her to wipe at the mascara she had left on his forehead.

Nikola smiled too, hesitantly at first, then brilliantly. He swept towards her suddenly and grabbed her around the waist swinging her around in a burst of joyful abandon, whooping happily.

"They're alive, Helen! Both of them! My God!" He shouted and Helen smiled brilliantly with him. He hugged her tightly before he put her down.

"Thank you…ThankYou!" Nikola said, reaching for the book and scanning the back again. "He's in New York. And he's alive."

Helen nodded, caught up in his joy, elated to be a part of something so singularly miraculous.

"Bijou…" Helen said and Nikola nodded, eyes lost in the distance again.

"Yes…Yes she needs to know. It won't be easy. For either of them. But they need to know." Nikola nodded and took a deep breath.

"Helen…" He started, blue eyes determined. "Will you-"

"Of course, Nikola. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

* * *

**Thank you to _The Watch Stander_ for your kind words. They helped me get back on the bull so to speak. **

**Historical note- I wish I had found the character before the final few chapters. The 'big man' named Stefan is loosely based on Stefan Starzynski, President of Warsaw, who was imprisioned in the Dachau camp and was reported murdered in 1943. **


End file.
